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1. Introduction
The universal character of science and the growing globalization of the academic community suggests the existence of generally shared norms about the "ideal academic" among those working in academia. Research about gender in academia suggests this ideal academic to be gendered, the norms in the male-dominated natural sciences being even more gendered than in the arts and humanities sector ([6] Benschop and Brouns, 2003; [17] Knights and Richards, 2003; [34] Van den Brink and Benschop, 2012).
We were able to examine the images of the ideal academic in these two sectors when we subsequently worked on two independent research projects commissioned by the executive boards of an arts and a sciences university, aiming to investigate the causes and consequences of the underrepresentation of women in higher academic positions and to distill possible interventions based upon these analyses. We conducted interviews with deans as an integral part of these research projects. While aware of the theoretical notion of "othering women," we were quite struck by the way deans in both universities were portraying women academics as not living up to the competencies and commitment needed to be successful at their schools.
Before explaining how deans construct images of the ideal academic in the two universities and how these images are gendered we will first briefly introduce how theories on the ideal worker and the ideal academic had framed our expectations about the material. Second, we will describe our two cases into more detail. Subsequently, we will describe the interview protocol we used and the way we performed content analysis. Finally, we contrast the ideal images constructed by the deans and define the space the different constructions offer for renegotiating the image of the ideal academic to be more inclusive for women academics.
2. Theory
Women as the "other"
The phenomenon of constructing women as the "other" who is perceived as different from the ideal worker is typical for most, if not all, organizations ([1] Acker, 1990; [3] Bailyn, 2006; [22] Rapoport et al. , 2002). The culturally shared image of the ideal worker as someone who can work as though they have no social or caring obligations outside work affects how commitment is defined and competences are valued ([20] Lewis, 1997; [22] Rapoport et...